In yet another scandalous tale of someone pretending to be someone else on the internet, a Twitter user going by the name of Parks Denton has been outed as a catfisher.
Denton, whose photos showed him as a blue-eyed redhead, appears to have exchanged flirtatious direct messages with plenty of people from Gay Twitter, a loose network of gay users on the platform.
After further investigation…I just found out that…I too…was messaged by this Parks Denton catfish 😔 pic.twitter.com/3LcyhZdCeM
— Jamie Lee Squirtis (@EmilioEmm) September 6, 2017
But it seems that anytime someone set up an IRL date with Denton, he ghosted. One user named Alex told New York magazine’s Select All that Denton stood him up two nights in a row.
“The whole thing was so weird for me because our messages weren’t sexual in any shape or form; it was just a friendly drink,” Alex told Select All. He even speculated on Twitter that he had been catfished.
https://twitter.com/thedealwithalex/status/900895873605017601
As some of Gay Twitter was quick point out, the situation should have been obvious from the start. First of all, what kind of name is Parks Denton?
how was the first clue not “Parks Denton”
— ✨ Caroline D Framke ✨ (@carolineframke) September 6, 2017
Well, one day before Denton was destroyed. But so weird. Really. Y’all fell for a man with a plural noun for a name?
— Gabe González (@gaybonez) September 6, 2017
https://twitter.com/dreamoforgonon/status/905276612836515842
Second of all, at some point, Denton switched fake identities.
Alex, the same guy who got stood up, noticed that Denton had changed his profile picture at sometime after they first DM’d.
“My recollection is that he was dark-haired; he had an ear piercing, chest hair … to me, he looked half-Asian … he looked different. I thought he was handsome,” Alex told Select All. “At some point [during] the week we were going to have a drink, his photo changed to the one you can see now with the blue eyes and the hat.”
Hindsight is 20/20, of course.
But it was all over once the friends of the real person whose photos were being used as Parks Denton recognized him on the fake account and alerted him. One of those friends, Sarah, tweeted several now-deleted photos of her and the real person whose photos were used.
@ParksDenton get your fake ugly ass off my friend’s accounts dnt be so stupid 2 take someones pictures who lives in the same city and is gay
— Sarah (@Sakel) September 5, 2017
“I do know the real person in the photos. He was my roommate when I lived in Brooklyn … and he is not Parks Denton,” Dara, another one of his friends, told Select All.
https://twitter.com/gaybonez/status/905404070277599232
Since then, all of the Parks Denton accounts have been removed. But that hasn’t stopped Gay Twitter from reveling in the aftermath.
For some, the only thing worse than actually being catfished was realizing they weren’t worthy of being catfished.
Should I be offended that this Parks Denton character followed me recently but didn’t try to catfish me?
— Matt Brennan (@thefilmgoer) September 6, 2017
I can’t believe I’m angry a fake person called Parks Denton didn’t even follow me
— Eli Matthewson (@EliMatthewson) September 6, 2017
Apparently I’m so old I wasn’t even catfished by Parks Denton
— @benjaminjs.bsky.social (@BenjaminJS) September 6, 2017
For others, it’s just some good Gay Twitter drama.
https://twitter.com/itgetsbedder/status/905285549728071681
https://twitter.com/peejaybrennan/status/905417831529017345
Gay Twitter Vs Parks Denton (2017) pic.twitter.com/OO5yvwvM6p
— Dan the Dancer ✨ (@DVruno) September 6, 2017
https://twitter.com/jpbrammer/status/905286696576720897
Meanwhile, whoever is running the social media for the Parks Department in Denton, Texas, is probably very overwhelmed today.
https://twitter.com/thedealwithalex/status/905447777483804672
H/T Select All
